Traditionally, computers may boot to only one operating system. Leveraging technologies like virtualization, computers may now be loaded with different operating systems. In this way, a user may boot to the operating system of the user's choice. In such systems, the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) firmware is typically configured to initialize the system in a single manner prior to booting the operating system selected by the user.
Different operating systems may require the BIOS firmware to perform a different system initialization prior to booting. For example, WINDOWS XP from MICROSOFT CORPORATION may require the BIOS firmware to initialize a graphics device before the operating system takes control. However, this may not be the case for certain LINUX distributions. In particular, LINUX can support initializing the graphics devices during kernel initialization. As a result, LINUX does not require the BIOS firmware to initialize the graphics devices before the operating system takes control. Other operating systems, such as real-time operating systems (RTOS) may require the BIOS firmware to initialize very few system components prior to booting.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the disclosure presented herein has been made.